Case Study
Why Latymer Upper School subscribed to ‘Books at JSTOR’
Librarian Terri McCargar unpacks the significant impact subscribing to Books at JSTOR has made upon students at Latymer Upper School in London.
Last year we subscribed to Books at JSTOR, which I saw as primarily of interest for A-level students pursuing EPQ or with History or English coursework. This year we added catalogue records for the whole collection (working with JSTOR to set this up through a service provided by OCLC) so that students and staff may also discover relevant content while searching the Library catalogue. I promoted to staff via an announcement in briefing and following up with an email. That same day, our Head of History replied to my promotional email, “This is awesome. Thank you.” Not a common response to emails about new subscriptions from busy teachers!
For students, I have added a note about the Books collection on our own JSTOR link page, as well as on the home page of Oliver, our library catalogue. When training Sixth Form students about where to find academic sources of information, I now include a demonstration of these, including how to find them on the JSTOR platform itself or via the library catalogue.
Many of our Sixth Form students use JSTOR regularly to find academic articles, so it’s been convenient and intuitive for them to be able to discover eBook content on the same platform, alongside their article results.
We have already had a tremendously positive response from Sixth Form students and staff.
While I was showing some Year 12 EPQ students the collection, their teacher, who is the Head of EPQ and an English teacher, searched for sources for her own Master’s in Victorian Studies. She was delighted to discover a wealth of primary sources on Aurora Leigh and women writing in the Victorian era that she had not found elsewhere.
When our Head of Art History asked for my help in finding books on a specific 12th Century Indian sculpture for a new course, I found some relevant eBooks on JSTOR, which were either out of print or would have been too expensive and/or niche to acquire in print. Students’ chosen topics at EPQ can be very eclectic and difficult for a school library to resource, but our students have found plenty of useful eBooks through the JSTOR collection on subjects as varied as: nudge theory, violence in film, protest music, string theory and voting rights for felons...
Having the collection helps me balance limited shelf space with being able to provide access to quality books that are seldom in demand.
Last month, I came across a highly recommended book on propaganda that hadn’t been borrowed once in five years. I noticed that the eBook was available through JSTOR and so it was easier to decide that we could remove the physical copy to free up some space.
As with the JSTOR journals, ‘Books at JSTOR’ is also highly applicable for all other curricula and research projects.
You can request a free trial for the JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection here, or for more information please contact team@jcsonlineresources.org or call +44 (0)1865 987211.